Due to previous issues that result in constant reboot on boot because the sys-usb used to run into a error I have set it especially and all my Qubes to never start on boot.
For a while all was good until sys-usb had those issues which Qubes eventually fixed when it came to attaching usb devices to Qubes, this issue also caused at times to my sys-usb to start but get stuck with the “starting qube” notification stuck as well and so removing mouse/keyboard or anything would be useless & require a restart of device ofc.
After this update that fix the issues with sys-usb I had a case where if I had usb devices plugged in before starting it up it wold cause this issue and such I always practiced not to encounter this again. Otherwise it worked fine, no issues.
Present Day: After updating Dom0 today & restart of my device due to other reasons the sys-usb has been giving me that old issue again. When I start it, it shows start up notification and freezes there making interacting with anything impossible.
Ive tried multiple restarts, ensured I had no usb device connected, etc and still the issue remains.
I have had a recent problem with sys-usb, which I solved as follows:
My case is the following:
‘Normal’ PC
Two USB controllers
One controller is in the same IOMMU group as several important system devices (PCIe, SATA, …)
It seems to give problems now.
Before, I believe both controllers were in sys-usb.
That controller was with no-strict-reset.
Now, after recent update, it seems I must leave that controller in Dom0.
I did a full reinstall of 4.2.4, but the problem continued.
Then I did the following:
Removed ‘bad controller’ from sys-usb devices.
Added items to the kernel command line in grub usbcore.authorized_default=0 rd.qubes.hide_all_usb rd.qubes.dom0_usb=<BDF>
<BDF> must be replaced with the BDF of the problem USB controller.
I also applied no-strict-reset on the ‘good’ controller, but I am not sure it was necessary.
Now I can use this controller only for keyboard and mouse, and the other one works with sys-usb for everything else.
I am not sure that I have correctly identified the problem, but I had a lot of black screens until I made these changes. When I get time, I will look in my backups for the exact differences, but right now I must get work done.
Thanks for the response but I believe our issue is different.
Im not experiencing any black screens due to issues with sys-usb nor the issue with same IOMMU group.
The qube has worked perfect before, it simply when Qubes team had broke the function of attach usb devices to qubes via GUI that the issue was first experienced & once they fix the issue it ultimately went a way. Now that there has been a new update the issue is back, the sys-usb freezes when starting leaving the notification frozen on the screen that it is starting which of course prevents any interaction with Qubes via the mouse & keyboard.
@unman Please please excuse me for this ping.
If you have time to give my matter a quick overview might help in giving me additional advisory but my question is, for a matter like this is it better to post this on something like Github if that how it works? As I only experienced this back when there was a bug with attaching usb devices and it detection less than 6 months ago, as before it didnt ever happen & after resolve the matter didnt happened again but now few updates later it is occurring.
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OK. Your problem sounded similar, because at one time I was seeing a ‘starting’ notification, freeze, and then dark screen.
The rest of these notes may not be very useful… mostly the steps I went through:
I started sys-usb from a text console ( using ctrl-alt-f2) to make sure that it was not only an X server problem, but was a passthrough/hardware problem causing full hardware lockup.
If you can launch sys-usb with watch qvm-run --pass-io sys-usb -- date in text console, it will confirm that it really starts, or not. Maybe you can see some errors for it in Dom0:/var/log/xen/console/…
I also saw lock of watch date running in a Dom0 terminal window - it sounds like you only have loss of usb keyboard and mouse, not really full freeze of everything?
Can you start sys-usb if you (temporarily) remove one or all of the USB PCI devices from it? It will confirm there is no problem with the sys-usb template itself.
If there is a driver problem, then maybe you can eliminate a controller to get your meetings working.
I noticed that I had an update of kernel-latest from 6.12 to 6.13 at about the same time as all the problems went away, so maybe I had driver problems.